The production of oil and gas requires specialized well equipment, such as pipes, valves, joints, and fittings that operate in extreme conditions, including, for example, high pressure, temperature, volatility, and corrosivity. Such conditions promote the rapid wear of well equipment and increase the potential for failure. Moreover, when well equipment does fail, the impact of the failure is typically catastrophic. For example, the failure of well equipment can result in massive explosions that hurt workers, destroy property, and halt operations for a significant time—potentially costing millions of dollars in liabilities, repairs, and lost revenue.
Well equipment particularly susceptible to catastrophic failure includes, for example, the equipment used in the process of hydraulic fracturing known as ‘fracing” or “fracking.” The process of fracing creates or extends fractures in subterranean rock formations by pumping fluid into the formation at high pressure. For example, fluid-driven fractures can be formed at the borehole in a drilling operation and then “grown” or extended into the rock formations. The injected fluid may contain “proppant” particles, such as grains of sand or ceramic, to lodge in the fractures thereby keeping them open. Fracing is used to improve the rate at which oil and gas can be produced from a reservoir, and fracing is especially useful for extracting oil and gas from formations having low porosity and permeability, such as shale rock and other formations deep below the earth's surface. The equipment used in hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas wells can include, for example, a slurry blender, high pressure/volume fracturing pumps, high pressure treating iron, and other pipes, joints, valves, and fittings, which are known as “frac iron” or, simply, “iron.” For example, frac iron can include swivel joints, pup joints, plug valves, check valves and relief valves.
To mitigate the likelihood and impact of their failure, frac iron must be periodically inspected and recertified according to certain specifications, which can be provided by, for example, a manufacturer or operator of the frac iron. Because of the likelihood and impact of failure, inspections can be performed as frequently as every 90 days. Inspections and recertifications typically require several different test procedures, which may include, for example, a visual check of bores, connections, seal surfaces; wall thickness measurements to check for erosion or corrosion, for example, using ultrasonic measurement; crack tests, for example, using magnetic particle measurement; and pressure tests, for example, of over 20,000 pounds per square inch (PSI).
Previously known methods to certify frac iron were lengthy and laborious, often lasting one to three weeks and requiring a human tester to control all testing, to record the results manually, and later to enter the results into a database—costing valuable production capacity due to downtime.
Also, previously known methods to certify frac iron were susceptible to inconsistencies due to the manually intensive nature of the certification, such as inconsistent performance of testing operations and inconsistent adherence to prescribed test specifications. Also, for example, certification records were created by manual input, introducing human error and recording and measurement variances into the certification records.
Also, previously known methods to certify frac iron were susceptible to operational inefficiencies. For example, certification records were kept in hard copy, which did not allow on-site operators to readily access certifications while in the field, which may be a remote location such as an offshore rig. Furthermore, certification records and the test results associated therewith could not be tracked, updated, or reported on from a central control center.